Guests and Ghosts Gather For 'Saturday Night Live'

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Younger spirits have come to haunt the place since the fall of 1975, when the ghosts of Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra were chased out of NBC's famous Studio 8H, at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, to make way for an anarchic band of comics aptly called the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. There, for example, is John Belushi, wielding his sword over a sandwich at the Samurai Deli. Over there is Gilda Radner, nattering Roseanne Roseannadanna-like. Somewhere else is Andy Kaufman, lip-synching the theme from ''Mighty Mouse,'' ''Here I come, to save the day!''

Their presence, along with many living alumni of ''Saturday Night Live,'' is keenly felt these days in Studio 8H as NBC prepares for the broadcast Sunday night of a two-and-a-half-hour special to begin the program's 15th season. Paul Simon and Prince will lead the musical presentations, while many of the hosts and company members from past seasons are expected to participate. There will also be tributes to Ms. Radner, who died of cancer in May at the age of 42, and Mr. Belushi, who died of a drug overdose in 1982 at age 33.

''It's particularly hard for people who do comedy to be sentimental,'' said Lorne Michaels, the executive producer and guiding spirit of the show. Only once before, in 1983, on the occasion of the show's 100th edition, has ''Saturday Night Live'' looked back. Too many times looking back would have prompted invidious comparisons to a company that included Jane Curtin, Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman and Dan Aykroyd, along with Ms. Radner and Mr. Belushi, when the show had its premiere on Oct. 11, 1975. Starting From a Clean Slate

Mr. Michaels, a Canadian-born producer and writer, had come to New York the previous April at the behest of Dick Ebersol, then the head of late night weekend programming for NBC. At the time, of course, there was no late night weekend programming at NBC, except for reruns of the Johnny Carson show and old movies. Most production had moved from New York to California, which left some antiquated studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza to experiment with.

Mr. Ebersol wanted a comedy-variety program and looked to Mr. Michaels, who had been a writer for the enormously successful ''Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In'' and for Lily Tomlin. He was barely in his 30's, Mr. Ebersol was even younger, and the affiliate stations were nervous. They grew more so as it got closer to the premiere and no one could tell them exactly what this show was going to be, except that it would be on Saturday night and it would be broadcast live.

Mr. Michaels assembled a company of unknowns whose common characteristics were razor sharp improvisational skills, fearlessness and a hunger to work under high pressure, often fueled, as it happened, by drugs.

''I knew what kind of comedy I wanted,'' Mr. Michaels said. ''My whole goal is for things to be funny. I'm not interested in shocking people. In 1975, there was no cable television, no other outlet for this kind of work.'' Finding the Right Look

If Mr. Michaels knew what kind of comedy he wanted to showcase on the new program, he was uncertain how it should look. To guide him he hired Eugene and Franne Lee, a husband-and-wife design team with a reputation for whimsical realism who had just won Tony Awards for their design for ''Candide.''

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The Lees, who are divorced and no longer work together, came out of Off Broadway and the regional theater. They had never been in a television studio until Mr. Michaels took them to 8H.

''I based the studio plan on the theater,'' said Mr. Lee, who remains the program's chief designer and has given it a sense of visual continuity. He created different performing areas within the studio. ''Realistic sets had gone out with 'The Honeymooners,' '' Mr. Michaels said. ''The comedy I wanted needed a real environment. We wanted it to be theatrical.'' Mr. Lee's $300,000 remodeling of the studio was about $200,000 over budget, and the money went not for glitter but for dust.

''I wanted a scruffy, ragged look,'' Mr. Michaels said. ''Every detail was perfect.'' A network executive disagreed, complaining that the set looked too dirty for all that money. ''We thought it was just like New York,'' Mr. Michaels said. ''A little decayed.''

To Mr. Lee, the show represented a group of artists working together over a long period of time, something that barely existed in the theater. Money was spent on keeping things simple. The costumes for the Killer Bees, for example, were simply poster-paint stripes on sweatshirts. ''It's kind of what I had hoped the regional theater was going to be, and was for a while,'' he said. Ratings About the Same

Much of the production staff from the early days of the show remains. The actors and writers, of course, have changed greatly. But the look and the character of the show, Mr. Michaels said, has remained consistent. Despite critical ups and downs, the show's ratings have remained virtually the same since the beginning: it is an extremely profitable show for the network.

Mr. Michaels left ''Saturday Night Live'' in June 1980, and returned in 1986. His hair is grayer now, at 44, though he still is boyish looking, and he has exchanged his Hawaiian shirts for Armani suits. His first season back was difficult, he acknowledged, but since then, the show has returned to its original form. He no longer fears the ghosts that linger in Studio 8H.

''The last two seasons have been very good for us,'' he said. ''For the first time, we're not afraid to look back at the first five years.''

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 1989, on Page C00026 of the National edition with the headline: Guests and Ghosts Gather For 'Saturday Night Live'. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe